Hi all,
I am delighted to announce the release of darcs 2.1.0, available at
http://darcs.net/darcs-2.1.0.tar.gz
What has changed?
-----------------
This version provides over 40 bug fixes and 20 new features since
darcs 2.0.2. The most notable changes are:
* Defaulting to darcs-2. The darcs initialize command now creates
darcs-2 format repositories by default. This change will make the
the improved conflict handling and merging semantics from darcs 2
available to more users. Note that no action is required on your
part. Darcs will continue working with all pre-existing
repositories. You can explicitly request an old-fashioned repository
if needed.
* Better HTTP support. Dmitry Kurochkin has refined our HTTP support
and fixed several http-related bugs from darcs 2.0.2. There is also
an experimental --http-pipelining feature you can enable on the
command line (or in your defaults file) for faster downloading.
Note: --http-pipelining is enabled by default for libwww, and also
for libcurl 7.19.1 (not yet released at the time of this writing)
* Repository correctness. David Roundy has resolved a longstanding
'pending patch' regression (originally reported on 2008-02).
Needless to say the offending case has been moved to our regression
testing suite
See the attached ChangeLog for more details.
What should I do?
-----------------
Upgrade! Binary versions should be available shortly, either from your
favourite package distributor or by third party contributors.
Other than installing the new darcs, no action is required on your part
to perform this upgrade. Darcs 2, including this particular version, is
100% compatible with your pre-existing repositories.
If you have not done so already, you should consider using the hashed
repository format in place of your current old-fashioned repositories.
This format offers greater protection against accidental corruption,
better support for case insensitive file systems. It also provides
some very nice performance features, including lazy fetching of patches
and a global cache (both optional).
If darcs 1 compatibility is not a concern, you could also upgrade your
repositories all the way to the darcs 2 format. In addition to the
robustness and performance features above, this gives you the improved
merging semantics and conflicts handling that give darcs 2 its name.
More details about upgrading to darcs 2 here:
http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/DarcsTwo
What comes next?
----------------
We will now be shifting to a time based release model, with the next
darcs release planned for January 2009.
For the next release of darcs, we will be focusing on optimising darcs's
day to day performance issues. We want darcs to fetch repositories as
fast as it possibly can over a network, and we especially want to
rehabilitate known slow commands like darcs annotate. We believe that a
few simple and practical changes can really improve the darcs experience
for most users.
Think you can help? We would love to hear from you. In fact, the first
darcs hacking sprint (25-26 October) is fast approaching! We have three
venues available: Brighton, Paris and Portland and everybody is invited
to come hack. See http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/Sprints
for details.
Thanks everybody, and enjoy!
--
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9